The bottling and canning industry is devoted to filling containers with a tremendous variety of products. These products vary in terms of their viscosity, ranging from high viscosity products such as peanut butter, salad dressings, and frozen concentrated juices; medium viscosity products, such as pharmaceutical syrups, soups, stews, and sauces; to low viscosity products such as wine and juices. These products also vary in terms of their properties, one the most notable of which is the presence of absence of carbonation. Champagne, beer, and soda pop beverages are all good examples of either naturally or artificially carbonated beverages.
The bottling line designs presently used are burdened with serious problems in the area of product recovery. The "product recovery problem" means that periodically a significant quantity of product in the bottling line becomes waste that cannot be economically recovered for later use. The product recovery problem typically arises in several situations with present bottling line designs. For example, because of the current design of bottling lines, if a bottling line is used to fill containers with a variety of different products over the course of a day or a week, then each time a bottling run for one product ends and a bottling run for a different product begins, a considerable amount of both products becomes unrecoverable waste. Current bottling line designs also cause a considerable amount of perishable products, or products requiring special handling to ensure product integrity or purity (such as carbonated products which must be maintained at a constant temperature during the bottling process), to become unrecoverable waste at the end of each work day, or bottling run, or product change.
It is a regrettable fact that much of the unrecoverable product waste currently created by the bottling industry is often literally dumped down the drain, or is stored in drums to later be taken to a landfill, or, for certain potentially hazardous products, to an appropriate hazardous waste disposal facility. In the case of food and beverage products, this unrecoverable waste is most often dumped down the drain. The "drain dumping" disposal method costs the bottler more than just the value of the wasted product, because this wasted product must be treated before it is reintroduced back into the environment.
For those bottling companies without their own waste water treatment facility, the waste product dumped into the drain travels through the sewage system to the local sewage treatment facility. The high sugar content of most wasted products then causes a population explosion in the bacteria at the sewage treatment facility. The bacteria used by sewage treatment facilities is "aerobic" bacteria, which means they use up oxygen as they consume sewage waste. Sewage treatment plants maintain a careful balance between their bacteria's population and the incoming sewage waste, to ensure adequate oxygen for their bacteria to survive. Sewage treatment plants make every effort to ensure that their entire system remains aerobic (with oxygen) rather than anaerobic (without oxygen). Aerobic bacteria do not create offensive odors when they consume sewage waste. Anaerobic bacteria create offensive odors, and are less efficient than aerobic bacteria at disposing of sewage waste. Sewage treatment plants track precisely how much high sugar content industrial waste is dumped into their system, and they charge each company dumping this waste a Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) assessment. Presently, the BOD assessment for many bottling plants ranges from $25,000 to $100,000 per month.
Sewage treatment plants also track precisely the quantity of suspended solids contained in the waste stream they receive from industrial sources, because the required treatment of these suspended solids is expensive. Suspended solids are present in unfiltered fruit juices, soups, sauces, peanut butter, condiments, and a wide variety of other products. In addition to a monthly B.O.D. assessment, sewage treatment plants also charge their industrial sewage sources a monthly suspended solids assessment. Presently, the suspended solids assessment for many bottling and canning plants ranges from $25,000 to $250,000 per month.
For those bottling companies that elect to build their own waste water treatment facility, they must incur the expense of building, maintaining, and operating their own facility. This cost, which can be considerable, is often incurred primarily because of their decision to dump wasted product down the drain.
The magnitude of the product recovery problem is surprisingly large. On a daily basis, many bottling companies are dumping 500 to 2500 gallons of wasted product down the drain, or into drums for landfill disposal, for each bottling line they operate. Many bottling companies operate multiple bottling lines in each of their bottling plants. Accordingly, there is a great need for a solution to the problem of product recovery. Such a solution must maintain product integrity and product purity throughout the entire recovery process.